Italy honours new ATLAS spokesperson
On 7 March, on the occasion of International Woman's Day, Fabiola Gianotti – ATLAS spokesperson – was one of eight women to be honoured for their achievements by Italian president, Giorgio Napolitan.
Gianotti was awarded Commendatore della Repubblica Italiana for her "scientific knowledge and her excellent management skills demonstrated in guiding the ATLAS project" as well as "her contribution to the prestige of the Italian scientific community in the field of nuclear physics".
Gianotti took over from Peter Jenni as spokesperson for the nearly 3000-strong ATLAS collaboration in March this year (CERN Courier May 2009 p31).
CERN sets particle physics on the road
CERN's new travelling exhibition, Accelerating Science, was inaugurated on 1 April at the University of Geneva as part of celebrations to mark the university's 450th anniversary. Developed by CERN's communication group working with physicists at the laboratory and in partnership with the University of Geneva, the exhibition has been financed by the H Dudley Wright Foundation, which aims to promote public awareness of the sciences.
Accelerating Science takes the form of a discovery trail along which visitors learn about particle physics, its fundamental questions and aims, and the tools used in its investigations. There are five interconnecting zones, each of which is designed to take visitors into a world of mystery and suspense.
After passing through the entrance tunnel, visitors encounter the first zone where a film and a mural recount the history of the Universe. The second zone is filled with interactive exhibits revealing the world of elementary particles. The giant mushrooms in the third zone explain through sound and images the main issues of contemporary particle physics, while in the fourth zone, visitors come face to face with the LHC machine and experiments.
The last zone comes back to the reality of day-to-day life, showing how fundamental physics serves the technological advances on which modern life depends.
Covering more than 400 square metres, Accelerating Science has been designed to travel through the CERN member states. With this in mind, it has a modular design and is thus able to adapt to different venues. It will stay at the university in Geneva until 28 June before moving to CERN's Globe of Science and Innovation for three months. Then it will be off to whichever member state requests it.
Polish mobile exhibition gets down to basics
Poland has developed its own successful travelling exhibition, The Large Hadron Collider – How does it work? Organized by a group of Polish institutions taking part in the LHC research programme, its aim is to explain what hadrons are and why we want to make them collide together, plus much more.
The original exhibition, shown for the first time in November 2008 in the physics department of Warsaw University of Technology as part of the Warsaw Festival of Science, consisted of three main parts.
The first of them contained seven separate stations – each manned by experts – devoted to the LHC accelerator, the four experiments, LHC physics and the constituents of matter. The machine stations included 3D models of detectors at 1:30 scale; exhibits from CERN and from Polish institutes involved in constructing parts of the detectors; and large photos and graphics. A special attraction was an interactive animation prepared by Polish students, which visualizes collisions in ALICE and the work of elements of the detector.
The second part of the exhibition is the main interactive part. About 20 different experiments present the laws of nature used in the construction of LHC and its detectors, starting at a very basic level (the aim is that the exhibition is accessible even to very young children). The quark model was illustrated with the help of coloured balloons: three small ones encased in a larger, transparent one, all filled with helium and "constructed" by the visitor. Electric acceleration, the Lorentz force, electromagnets, Ohm's law – "almost all" that is needed to understand how the LHC works – are explained in a set of experiments that everyone can repeat at home. More sophisticated experiments show how particle detectors work and demonstrate superconductors.
The third part shows what the LHC should bring. While it is not possible to predict the applications of LHC results, this section covers the benefits we have had from the past 50 years of research at CERN and other high-energy physics institutes, such as the World Wide Web and the Grid.
The exhibition is financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Polish research institutes (primarily Warsaw University of Technology, Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Warsaw and Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute for Nuclear Physics), by sponsors and local institutions. Support in the form of printed materials, exhibits, and the documentation needed to construct models was provided by CERN.
The exhibition is proving very successful. By the end of April it had visited Warsaw, Krakow, Tarnów, Poznań, Gliwice and Toruń, attracting an estimated 30 000 visitors. It was scheduled next to visit Lublin, Białystok and Gdansk. The contract with the ministry was for a total of 11 venues, but with a longer waiting list the organizers are looking for sponsors to keep the show on the road.